


The Irresistible Force Paradox

by magical_realism27



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/F, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 19:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magical_realism27/pseuds/magical_realism27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unstoppable force, immovable object, you know the drill</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Irresistible Force Paradox

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd, sorry for any possible errors! Don't own the show, of course.

**

"Have you and Emily ever kissed?" Paige doesn't know why she asks it, they're sitting together in the library, sun slitting in through the windows, her AP history textbook propped up on the table, green highlighter in hand. Spencer is reading  _Grapes of Wrath_. Rereading, probably. 

 

 "Paige, what are you doing?" Spencer raises an eyebrow and sets her book down on the marble table with a loud, awkward  _fwap._

 "Shooting the breeze." And the explanation comes out like a taunt. 

  "You over shot."

  "I hit my target." And it shouldn't be a game, not concerning this subject, not concerning  _Emily_. She had no mood, no stomach for them, and it seemed almost blasphemous; making her the string in their game of cat-and-mouse. 

 But Spencer was going to play. "What's you're preferred answer here?" 

Scratch that, she was going to cheat.

 

"Hey, walk me to work?" Emily chimes in. Neither of them had noticed her entrance. Odd, considering Emily-watching was their sport of choice, their competition. Paige gathers her things haphazardly, dropping her turquiose sticky-notes. Emily attempts to notify her, but Paige grabs her upper arm, guiding her out of the library, out of enemy territory. 

When the wooden door shuts behind them and they kiss, it doesn't feel like love, it feels like winning.

 

Paige doesn't know what her preferred answer here is. 

**

It's 3:54 a.m, Eastern time, November third, when they kiss for the first time.

Call her a romantic, but Spencer has always been good with dates. 

They had been at Aria's house, drunkenly sloshing Mr. Montgomery's wine into Dixie cups, and playing truth or dare. (Caleb and Hanna do it at  _least_ twice a week,  Aria gets to pick out Emily's clothes for the rest of the month). You know, banal, boring teenaged stuff.

(Phones out. Lights on. Spencer memorizing the quickest exit routes.)

Teenager stuff.

 

"Wait, wait. I think, I- Spencer." Paige pointed to her for emphasis. "And Em," She repeated the gesture. "Should  _kiiiiiiis_." Paige slurred. 

"Ew, Paige. No more wine." Emily huffed, and Caleb failed to mask an excited giggle. 

Hanna rolled her eyes. "No, that's lame." She crossed her arms, to exaggerate the point. 

Spencer could have kissed  _her_ then. 

"It's my turn!" Paige declared. "Just a peck." She leveled her gaze with Spencer. 

 

And what could she do? Competitiveness was encrypted in the Hastings gene code, like the chin, or being a gifted tennis player. 

" _Just_ a peck?" And her laugh at the end sounded meaner than she intended. 

 " _Spence._ " Warned Emily, so hard it made her flinch. Sometimes she forgot that people can grow up, that some things aren't just coded into DNA. That this Emily is stronger than every last version before it. Her. 

" _Em_." She drawls. Because not everything has to change.

 

So they lean in, and Aria widens her eyes and Hanna giggles nervously and Paige  _watches_ , just bores her eyes into Spencer. Emily tasted like mango chapstick, because Emily always tastes like mango chapstick. Even when they were twelve and kissing on her porch and Emily  _liked boys_ and Spencer liked pretending Emily wasn't just kissing her because of  _Alison Alison Alison_. 

She tastes like wine, and the wax edge of a Dixie cup, and like Paige. She definitely tastes like winning. 

 

"Why are we up here?" Spencer asks as she and Paige enter Mike's room.

"Because those idiots want to play  _Twister_ and we're trying to find the board. No more alcohol for you." Paige sorts through the rumpled homework assignments on his desk.

"For me? I'm a forgetful drunk, but apparently you're one that likes voyeurism." 

"It was just a  _dare_."

"A dare you got off on."

"You got off on it too." Only it's a whisper, and a question, not a statement. Only Paige is kissing her in her best friend's brother's room and she smells like coconuts and she tastes like  _defeat defeat defeat_. 

**

Sometimes Paige wonders if she deserves it. 

"Deserve what?" Emily always asks when Paige lets it slip from her mouth. And Emily smiles like she only has one smile to give, so it had better be goddamn amazing. And that's how Paige knows she deserves it. 

 

" _You're not. You're not_." Paige would sometimes say out loud, before she met Emily. If she wore pearls, she wasn't gay. If she stared at the boys' swim team with the rest of the girls, she wasn't gay. If her father, and mother, and her old, scary Aunt Lucille loved her, she wasn't gay. Of course, after she met Emily, it changed to " _Girls like you don't like girls like that."_

 _"But they like girls."_  Another voice would reply. An Alison shaped one. There was always a laugh tacked to the end of it. 

 

"I'm coming, I'm coming" Spencer rasped, and Paige looked up at her from between her thighs. She was never supposed to look up.

 

Spencer crumpled on top of her, trying to catching her breath. 

"Don't ruin my quilt. My aunt made it for me." 

"You're good." Was Spencer's reply.

"I've had practice." 

"No, no. It's more than that. It's like a sport to you." She rolled on to her stomach, the moonlight lazily peeking through Paige's beige curtains and dancing on Spencer's back.

"We're bad people." Paige decided. 

"I know. I just got back from a date with Toby."

"Do you ever hate yourself?" Paige attempted to wrap her earnest question in the clothes of a challenge. Spencer dipped her head in response. 

"Do you?" 

"Yes."

"You don't have to."

Paige wanted to joke " _You're just saying that because you slept with me._ " But she couldn't fathom the right tone onto the tip of her tongue. Spencer wordlessly got up to clothe herself. 

Paige went to shower once she was alone. Emily called her twice while she washed her hair.

She redialed and finally let herself think, " _It'd be easier if girls like me didn't like girls like her._ " She tacked her own laugh to the end of it.

**

Spencer had never been brave. Or strong. She had never posessed any stereotypical trappings of the classical hero from the stories. She thought that she had never claimed to. She had never much liked people who forced her to claim things.  

Melissa, her mom, her dad, Alison, Toby, Emily. All formed half-fleshed out opinions of her. They wrote her her very own personal Terms and Conditions of existing. All she ever had to do was click 'agree'.

 

Okay, maybe she was being unfair when she put Emily on her list. But she never claimed to be fair. Emily's Terms and Conditions were different than the rest. Just, "love me" was all they had said. But Spencer had only skimmed the fine print. Some lawyer legacy she was. 

Maybe her parents' hadn't read the fine print either. 

 

Spencer always made a habit out of watching the watchers (irony at its finest). She saw Paige see Emily. She felt queasy.

She was used to watching Emily, she could earn an official Girl Scouts merit badge in Watching Emily. Paige was different. Paige never claimed anything of Emilys'. Not without asking first. 

 

Okay, maybe Spencer had a bit of Tragic Hero in her after all.

 

**

_What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?_

Chaos. 

It's what Paige thinks of as she watches Emily and Spencer share fries. Could you love more than one person? Paige had always wondered. 

She knew it was nigh impossible to hate more than one. 

Emily had loved Maya, loved Alison (Paige's One). Had she loved Spencer? Did she still?

(it always appeared to be more about protection than love. Paige had gotten it, eventually, when a stranger had overpowered her, had dosed her with  _something,_ had duct taped her mouth. all because she loved Emily.  _You always love the wrong people_ a new voice had shrieked as Paige hollered to herself in Nate's cabin's closet. The voice was Emily's.)

 

Paige watched Emily brush Spencer's hand. Watched her look away, almost sheepishly. No games, no tricks, no scores at the end. 

Paige had always fancied herself the immovable object. But maybe she got it wrong. Maybe she was the unstoppable force. 


End file.
